Own goal? Chemistry professor & Porton Down expert shed new light on charges against Russia

Porton Down’s CEO yesterday told Sky Newsthat the facility had not identified the source of the nerve agent used in Salisbury. The Foreign Office, which had tweeted the claim, deleted that tweet yesterday after Porton Down’s admission.

The front page of the Times had even claimed that ‘Ministers and security officials” were suddenly able to identify not only the country of manufacture but the very laboratory it was made in.

The Establishment’s ‘PR/diversion exercise’ is now endeavouring to exonerate Johnson, with the BBC claiming that it can’t find footage it has only just shown.

Professor David Collum, Cornell University’s Professor of Organic Chemistry, has issued a statement on the simplicity of fabricating Novichoks and the relative ease of manufacturing them safely.

Cornell University is one of America’s ‘Ivy League’ educational institutions. As of 2017, it could claim fifty-six Nobel laureates and four Turing Award winners in its history. So a claim by Cornell’s variously-published Professor of Organic Chemistry, David Collum (below right), carries considerable weight.

The ‘hastily-erected ring-fence’ of PR and false assertions around Boris Johnson’ lies in pieces. His – and the government’s – dishonesty has been exposed. Boris Johnson has been exposed as making a false claim in an interview that Porton Down chemical weapons facility had ‘categorically’ told him there was no doubt that Russia was the source of the poison used in the Salisbury attack. He also asserted that the nerve agent had come from Russia, as only a ‘state actor’ could possibly manufacture a Novichok agent.

Professor Collum’s dismissal of the ‘must be Russia’ line could not be more emphatic – but he was prepared to go even further when the SKWAWKBOX asked him to provide further information on what level of laboratory set-up would be required to manufacture a ‘Novichok or related agent’ – the description provided by the UK’s Porton Down facility.He told us: “The compounds are simple as hell to make. Doing so without killing yourself would be more challenging but within the capabilities of many laboratories”.

Contrary to the claims of the government and its apologists, even just among ‘state actors’ Russia is far from the only known manufacturer of Novichok compounds. The following countries have produced them, are on record as having purchased/received them, or are linked to them by academic texts: details here.

Those seeking a change for the better will be thankful – though embarrassed – that the truth has been exposed.